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I swiped a chunk of crusty snow, clamped it into a ball, and hurled it at the blonde. The snowball hit her upside the head, bursting into powder.
“Saiman! Step away from him!”
The blonde whipped her head around. “Kate…”
Her body twisted with preternatural fluidity. Female flesh melted like wax and re-formed into a muscle-corded frame. She swept toward me through the snow, growing, twisting, molding, hardening, too fast to follow and then a man wrapped his arm around my waist pulling me to him.
He was tall, perfectly proportioned, and muscled like a Roman statue. The same golden radiance that had illuminated the blonde lit his skin from within. His hair, a deep red streaked with gold, fell to his waist without a trace of a curl. His face was angular, yet masculine, and his grin had a mordant edge sharp enough to draw blood. He leaned toward me and I got a good look at his eyes. They were orange.
Radiant, brilliant orange, streaked with pale green that almost looked like the crystals of ice growing on a window during a freeze.
They did not look human.
“Kate,” he repeated, pulling me closer. He towered at least half a foot above me. Snowflakes swirled around us. His breath smelled like honey. “I’m so glad you came to visit. I was so dreadfully bored.”
That’s it. The flare had driven him insane.
I tried to pull away, but Saiman held me tight. There was strength in those arms that I had never expected. If I struggled too much, Derek would go ballistic. A woman wrestling with a naked man who probably outweighed her by eighty pounds tended to trigger onlookers’ protective instincts, even if they weren’t bound by a blood oath.
“Derek, please go down to the apartment and wait for me at the window.”
He just stood there.
“Jealous?” Saiman laughed.
I tore myself long enough from those eyes to stare at Derek. “Please go.”
Slowly, as if waking up from a dream, he turned and left the roof.
“What about the vampire?” Saiman asked.
“Just ignore me,” Ghastek said. “Think of me as a fly on the wall.”
Bastard.
Saiman touched my hair and I felt my braid unwinding on its own. In a moment, my hair framed my face.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
He grinned wider. “Deep magic. It sings in my bones. Don’t you feel it?”